The passenger of a vehicle that crashed into a home on Cliff Drive Saturday died Thursday morning with his two sons at his bedside.
Warren Fuller, 77, had been in the Intensive Care Unit at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital since the accident, which occurred around 12:15 p.m. when 62-year-old driver Esther Argenal lost control of the Nissan Maxima she was driving eastbound along Cliff Drive, passed over opposing lanes of traffic, off the road and into a bedroom wall at 1310 Cliff Drive. No one was in the home at the time, but the residence sustained major damage. Argenal escaped serious injury, but Fuller was taken to the hospital with major chest and internal injuries.
The crash, which is still under investigation, was one of three major collisions to take place on Cliff Drive in the past week, and the fatality is the second. A woman, Juanita Owens, 72, was killed Sunday after her car was broadsided while pulling left out of a driveway along the 1500 block of Cliff near Santa Cruz Boulevard. Owens was removed from her car and taken to Cottage, where she was pronounced dead on arrival from a head trauma. Harry Atterbury, 54, the driver of the on-coming Jeep Grand Cherokee, was admitted to the hospital in stable condition.
On Monday, a motorcyclist traveling south on Meigs Road just north of Cliff was struck on the right side by a small pickup entering Meigs near McDonald’s, breaking the man’s leg.